Perazzo, June 16, 2014

(The first 7 out of 14 patches skied.)

This was a recon ski mission day. I’ll add a quote from the movie Heartbreak Ridge. Profile: “Recon platoon kicks butt!”
While two skiers, Spence and Stev, don’t make up a platoon, we had a successful day of ski recon. We found and skied on 14 different patches. We also took note of other skiing possibilities for future trips.
After driving close to an hour on mostly unmarked dirt roads we spent another hour and a half hiking to find patches to ski.

Here is a portion of a topo map that show the area we explored:

We skied near the peak marked as 8740.

Spence hiking past 8740 on the way to snow patches:

Spence starts down on our first run of the day:

Stev starts another run:

Spence:

Spence making fresh soft-serve tracks:

Stev completing soft-serve 8’s…

…and hiking out for more…

Stev on the next patch:

Spence navigates between micro-cliffs:

Spence hiking out for more…

If you look closely, you might be able to see the first seven patches we skied.

(The second 7 out of 14 patches skied.)

Spence on one of the higher and longer patches:

Stev applies the brakes before running out of snow:

Spence threads the needle on the Giant Slalom side of the Trident Patch…

…then he skis the Mini Slalom side of the Trident Patch…

Spence moves on to other patches…

Stev billie goatin’ to get over to another patch…

…some of the steeper sections were more of a monkey crawl.

Stev on the next patch, which was one of the longer and more interesting runs of the day:

Spence…



…and finding just enough snow next to the rocks to make more turns…

Stev surveys the menu on our last run of the day, suncups, funcups or runnels for your life:

Spence getting a few more turns on our 14th patch de jour:

Ski recon was successful. We’re looking forward to a return mission with more snow in the future.